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Umbraco 17: Release Candidate
Today, we’ve made the Umbraco 17 release candidate available. This marks the beginning of four weeks of internal testing and community review, culminating in the final release on November 27.
Umbraco 17 LTS: Final Release
A Milestone Major Release
Overview:
A Major Release and a Milestone Release
On one hand, Umbraco 17 is the next step in Umbraco’s predictable six-month major release cadence. Just like every major version, it introduces a set of new capabilities - including load balancing the backoffice and consistent date handling - features that strengthen performance, reliability, and editorial experience for all projects.
On the other hand, Umbraco 17 isn’t just “the next major.” It stands out as the next LTS and represents the culmination of a two-year journey that began when we introduced a brand new backoffice architecture (the Bellissima project) in Umbraco 14.
Over the last three releases, Umbraco HQ, together with the community and partners, have shaped, refined, and stabilized this modern frontend architecture, ensuring full feature parity with Umbraco 13, polishing the developer and editor experience, and making sure the extensible backoffice supports real-world use cases.
Umbraco 17 is the point where that journey comes together:
The "new backoffice" introduced in Umbraco 14 is no longer “new”. It’s mature, polished, and ready for long-term adoption
The content platform has modernized its foundation and extended its flexibility
The entire ecosystem has caught up, from extension APIs to package compatibility
All in all, Umbraco 17 is the ideal LTS version for agencies and businesses looking for stability, longevity, and room to grow.
If your Umbraco project is on Umbraco 13 and you’re looking for a broader overview of the changes between Umbraco 13 and the jump to Umbraco 17, this blog post is a good starting point.
If you’re looking for a more profound technical walk-through of the new features in Umbraco 17, the Release Candidate blog post is the place to look.
Now, let’s take a look at what’s new in Umbraco 17 from the CMS, Umbraco Cloud, and Umbraco’s commercial add-ons.
What’s New in Umbraco CMS 17
Well, let's show you!
In this unboxing video Lotte Pitcher, Head of Developer Relations, Niels Lyngsø, Technical Product Manager and Senior Developers on the CMS team Laura Neto and Nikolaj E. Lauridsen, will not only show you what's new in Umbraco 17 but will walk you through the biggest features and improvements since Umbraco 14:
Built on .NET 10 LTS for True Long-Term Stability
Umbraco 17 arrives on the solid foundation of .NET 10 Long-Term Support, giving Umbraco Partners and end-clients the stability they need to plan confidently and deliver reliably.
When a LTS release of .NET ships, many companies, products, and developers lean in, knowing it will serve as a secure, dependable foundation for the years to come. The same applies to Umbraco and the businesses we support. Enterprise wants stability, and developers want productivity and performance. With .NET 10, you get all of that.
If you are curious about the performance improvements of .NET 10, you can find more details here or the more general information about the .NET 10 release here.
Because Umbraco has aligned its release cadence with .NET, Umbraco 17 and .NET 10 arrive as dual LTS releases, giving you a predictable, stable, and strong foundation for years to come.
Load-balancing the Umbraco backoffice - scale out, not just up
A major improvement in Umbraco 17 is the ability to load balance the backoffice. Until now, only the public-facing website could run across multiple servers, while the backoffice had to remain on a single machine. For many organisations, this created a bottleneck as large editorial teams relied on one server for all content creation and media management, limiting performance, resilience, and scalability.
With Umbraco 17, the entire backoffice can now run across multiple servers just like the front-end website. This means better performance for busy content teams, improved resilience (no single point of failure), and a simpler infrastructure overall. One unified application that can scale horizontally as your business grows.
Consistent Dates in Umbraco 17 – A smaller change with a big impact
The new backoffice scalability pairs perfectly with another foundational improvement in Umbraco 17; Consistent UTC date handling.
When editors manage and schedule content, potentially from multiple time zones, every action, schedule, and log entry must be interpreted the same way everywhere. In Umbraco 17, all system dates (creation, updates, publishing, logs, etc.) are now stored and exposed in UTC, with a built-in migration that updates existing data automatically.
That means:
Every server sees and uses the same exact time, no matter its location
Scheduled publishing works reliably across regions
Activity logs and reports are consistent and comparable
Moving your site between servers or regions no longer causes time drift
For example, in a distributed team, an editor in London can schedule content to publish at 09:00 UK time. A colleague in New York viewing the schedule will see the planned publication in their local time. The date and time are persisted in UTC, ensuring the scheduled publication time is ambiguous from the server perspective and goes live at the time both editors expect.
To support editors directly, Umbraco 17 also introduces a new Date Time Picker that includes date, time, and timezone selection. The timezone list can be customized so editors only see the options relevant to the project, which is especially helpful for global websites or region-specific content teams. It provides clearer visual support and reduces confusion when working with content on global websites.
By ensuring the backoffice can run on multiple servers and by making all system dates consistent and timezone-independent, Umbraco 17 creates a much more stable and predictable editing experience. Whether teams are collaborating across continents, managing campaigns, or scheduling time-sensitive publications, everything behaves exactly as expected—no matter which server they happen to hit.
These two features together make Umbraco far more robust for global websites, large editorial teams, and growing digital businesses that need reliable performance and predictable content behaviour across regions and infrastructure.
An Accessible Umbraco Backoffice - With Continuous Focus
Throughout 2025, we’ve been working closely with an external accessibility consultant to review and improve the editor-facing workflows in the Umbraco backoffice against WCAG standards. Most of the issues identified in the audit have now been addressed and will be included in 17 or are targeting 17.1.
These updates make everyday work in the backoffice more consistent and predictable for all editors, including those using assistive technologies. They also help organisations move closer to meeting accessibility expectations in their internal tools, not just on the public-facing website.
A smaller set of larger, system-level items, such as support for text spacing and improved keyboard movement for certain interface elements, remains open. These are documented in our Accessibility Conformance Report, and planned for completion in 2026.
Community-Led Improvements to Umbraco 17 Documentation
A huge shout-out goes to our Community Docs Team, the incredible group who've reviewed, updated, and in many cases rewritten the documentation needed for the new backoffice introduced in Umbraco 14. Over the past months, they’ve refined more than 40 articles to clearly explain topics, new methods, and areas of change for developers and business owners exploring Umbraco 17 for the first time.
Their work highlights the power of the open-source community, including the companies supporting their contributions. Thanks to them, the Umbraco documentation, and especially how to extend the backoffice, now offers a solid foundation for learning, adoption, and building on the "new" backoffice.
At the same time, documentation is never “done.” The knowledge and approaches around the previous backoffice grew over many years, shaped by real-world use cases and feedback. The same will happen for Umbraco 17 and beyond: as more people explore the "new" backoffice, new approaches, tips, and best practices will continue to emerge.
We welcome contributions of all kinds, whether requests for new documentation or pull requests with your expertise. Together, we’ll continue building a rich, evolving resource for the entire Umbraco community.
Umbraco Cloud and Add-ons
Umbraco 17 on Cloud From Day One
Umbraco 17 is available on Umbraco Cloud from the moment it launches.
A clear path toward best-in-class load balancing on Cloud
The new load balancing support in Umbraco 17 gives us the technical foundation to deliver proper load balancing on Umbraco Cloud. This is not available yet. Work is ongoing, and we look forward to revealing more about this next year.
The goal is to support a higher number of concurrent editors, removing single-machine bottlenecks, and improving resilience for customers with demanding workloads. Now that the CMS supports true horizontal scaling for the whole application, we can build Umbraco Cloud features that take full advantage of it.
Cloud enhancements for enterprises and organizations
Running Umbraco 17 on Cloud also brings the operational improvements released throughout 2025. Since Umbraco 16, these include:
The 2nd iteration of CI/CD with targeted environment deployments and faster, validated runs
Hostname monitoring, pre-validation, and managed challenges that reduce risk during launches, provide tools to mitigate unwanted traffic, and more
Custom Identity Provider support for the Cloud Portal, allowing organisations to benefit from centralised authentication and user management
Daily bandwidth insights for better capacity planning and operational visibility
Together, these capabilities make Umbraco Cloud the most controlled, secure, and low-maintenance way to run Umbraco 17.
Umbraco MCP
The final version of the Umbraco Developer MCP is now live, marking a major milestone in our journey to bring flexible, sustainable AI access to Umbraco projects. This release delivers full API parity with the Management API, refreshed and expanded documentation, a smoother media-creation experience, and multicultural content support, along with a wide range of refinements across the board.
The Umbraco Developer MCP is built first and foremost for developers, but we’re equally focused on bringing the power of AI to content teams. Upcoming capabilities are designed to make AI a natural part of everyday editorial workflows. You can follow what’s on the way, including Tool Collections, the Editor MCP, and the Content Delivery MCP, on the public roadmap.
Umbraco Engage - Ready For The Long-Term With Umbraco 17
With this release, Engage is fully aligned with the new backoffice experience. Engage was already rebuilt for Umbraco 16 to take advantage of the new backoffice framework. With the Long-Term Support (LTS) release in version 17, it now runs on a solid and future-ready foundation.
This release also introduces Deploy support for Engage, making it easier to move your setup between environments. You can transfer configuration items such as segments, personas, journey steps, and goals, while analytics data remains safely in each environment.
If you’ve been planning to introduce Engage to your projects, version 17 is the ideal time to do so.
Learn more about using Engage and its features in the Umbraco Engage documentation, or explore the product on the Umbraco Engage page.
Umbraco Commerce - It’s Easy To Get Started
There’s no better time to start exploring the full potential of Umbraco Commerce. Even if you haven’t tried it yet, this new LTS gives you a stable foundation to dive in and see how Commerce can power your online store, fully integrated with the Umbraco DXP.
Get started easily
We’ve prepared a clear step-by-step guide to help you build your first store, including an out-of-the-box Shopping Cart, Checkout, and even a My Account environment. These basic needs are included in the tutorials and are also open-sourced, so you can quickly set up your first store and start expanding. Check out the full guide here: Build a store with Umbraco Commerce.
Whether you’re looking to try Commerce for the first time or revisit it with a fresh perspective, Umbraco 17 is the perfect opportunity to explore what’s possible.
Umbraco Forms - Licensing & Subscription Changes in Umbraco 17
Changes to the licensing model
This change was first announced in August, with the transition taking effect from September 1st, when Umbraco Forms moved to a subscription-based license model using license keys. Starting with Forms 17, only this new license key format is supported. Existing one-off licenses will continue to work on earlier versions, but must be migrated to a subscription license to be used with Umbraco 17 or later.
One-off licensing ends
Starting with Umbraco Forms 17 the one-off fee license model is discontinued. All new licenses for Forms will be subscription-based. This aligns Forms with the broader commercial licensing model used across Umbraco’s DXP products.Transition from .lic file to license key
In the new subscription model, you’ll receive a license key instead of a .lic file. While older versions (pre-v17) may still support .lic files, Forms 17 expects the license key to be configured in appsettings.json.
For details and exact instructions on how to configure the new license key, see the Umbraco Forms licensing documentation: “Installing subscription license product key”.Migration path for existing customers
If you currently have a one-off Forms license but wish to upgrade to Umbraco 17 (or later), you’ll need to migrate your license to a subscription model. On the Umbraco Forms product page, you can choose “I want to migrate my forms license to subscription-based”.
Umbraco has committed to converting your existing one-off license into subscription time. The time you have left is 32 months minus the age of your license.Support for older licenses
Your existing one-off license will continue to work for Umbraco versions prior to 17 (e.g. v13, v16) even if you don’t immediately migrate. But to run Forms on Umbraco 17 or higher, you must adopt the subscription model.Which versions support the subscription model / license key. Versions Forms 13.6+, Forms 16.1+, and Forms 17 (and beyond) support the subscription licensing model.
What stays consistent
Domain coverage & development domains
The new subscription license maintains the same domain logic: one production domain (with its subdomains), plus two development/testing domains. Additional domains (when needed) can be purchased or configured as extra domains in the license.Functionality & updates
The subscription includes:
• access to feature improvements, updates, bug fixes, and security updates
• the same Form creation, workflows, and reporting capabilities customers are used to
Umbraco Forms on Umbraco Cloud
If you use Forms on Umbraco Cloud then you will automatically be upgraded to the new license key. The license remains included in Umbraco Cloud at no cost. No action is required.
Umbraco Workflow - Release Sets
Plan, group, and publish content together
With Release Sets, editors and teams can plan and publish multiple content items together at once instead of one by one. It’s perfect for coordinating campaign launches, seasonal updates, or large content changes that need to go live simultaneously.
A release set lets you:
Combine content updates across different areas of your site into one group
Review, approve, and schedule the entire set for publication
Keep changes private and safe until everything is ready to go live
Feature flag control
In Umbraco 16, Release Sets are an optional experimental feature. You can try them out by turning them on through a feature flag in your configuration.
In Umbraco 17, Release Sets are enabled by default so editors can start using them right away. If you prefer not to use this feature yet, you can disable it via the new granular permissions.
This approach gives teams flexibility: explore the benefits of grouped publishing at your own pace, or keep your existing publishing flow if that fits your process better. You can learn more about how to enable and work with Release Sets in the Workflow documentation.
Granular permissions
Workflow 17 adds comprehensive permissions for all features, allowing you full control over which user groups can access which features. To best facilitate this change, Workflow’s settings have been relocated to the backoffice Settings section. This move also means you can grant users access to the Workflow section, without also giving them access to system-level settings.
Umbraco UI Builder - The Perfect Time To Start Using It
With Umbraco 17, there’s never been a better moment to start using Umbraco UI Builder. It lets you create fully integrated management interfaces for your custom data directly in the Umbraco backoffice, without the need for complex custom code.
UI Builder uses a fluent API to generate sections, trees, and dashboards that match the native Umbraco experience, so your editors can work with custom data just like any other content in the CMS. It’s ideal for managing anything from product data to external integrations or business-specific entities.
Once you’ve built your setup, it’s ready for the future. From Umbraco 17 onward, custom interfaces made with UI Builder automatically upgrade along with the package, meaning no extra integration work or manual updates when moving to newer Umbraco versions.
Learn more about getting started in the Umbraco UI Builder documentation
Umbraco Deploy - Engage Support Now Available
Starting with Umbraco 17, Deploy now supports transferring your Engage setup between environments. This includes configuration items such as segments, personas, journey steps, and goals, making it easier to manage and synchronize your personalization setup across development, staging, and production.
Analytics and engagement data are not included in transfers, as this information is unique to each environment and should not overwrite data on your live site.
Engage Deploy support is available from Umbraco 17 and works between environments running the same Umbraco version to ensure compatibility.
Learn more about how to work with Deploy in the Umbraco Deploy documentation.
Start Using Umbraco 17 Today
With new tools for editors, improved customization options, and a more refined backoffice experience, Umbraco 17 helps your team work smarter, right out of the box.
Get started quickly:
Spin up a project on Umbraco Cloud: One-click setup and hosting for Umbraco projects, fully updated for Umbraco 17. Take a trial or sign in on Umbraco Cloud.
Download Umbraco 17: The latest version is available on NuGet.
Explore the documentation: Our documentation for Umbraco 17 covers everything from the new Rich Text Editor to advanced extension points and upgrade guides. Start reading at docs.umbraco.com.
